Market Snapshot
Asia: Japan +0.1% to 19886. Hong Kong +0.4% to 27740. China +2.7% to 4195. India -0.5% to 28666.
Europe: London -0.4%. Paris -0.5%. Frankfurt -1.4%.
Futures: Dow -0.2%. S&P -0.2%. Nasdaq -0.1%. Crude -1% to $55.82. Gold +0.4% to $1206.10.
Ten-year Treasury Yield flat at 1.9%
Economic News
8:30 Housing Starts
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
10:00 Philly Fed Business Outlook
Four Federal Reserve speakers are on within a two-hour time frame today:
First up is Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, scheduled to speak to business leaders in Palm Beach, Florida, at 1 p.m.EST. Lockhart is a voting member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year.
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, who isn’t a voter, gives a speech on the economic outlook in New York at 1:10 p.m. EST.
At 1:30 p.m. EST, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, also a non-voter, will speak in London.
And finally, Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s Vice Chairman, is slated to talk about inflation at the International Monetary Fund at 3 p.m. EST.
Key earnings before the open
ADS, BLK, BX, C, FCFS, FCS, FRC, GS, GWW, HOMB, KEY, PBCT, PM, PPG, PVTB, SHW, SON, TSM, TZOO, UNH, WBS
Key earnings after the close
AMD, ASB, AXP, CCK, CE, CYT, EGP, MAT, NOW, SLB
Markets
U.S. stock futures are set to move lower this morning, with investors shaking off a stream of better-than-expected earnings and instead remaining cautious ahead of comments from key Federal Reserve members and manufacturing data. The losses marked a pullback from yesterday’s advances, when better-than-expected earnings and a jump in oil prices sent the benchmarks close to record closing levels.
Following a series of disappointing data releases, China reported its inbound FDI stayed robust in the first quarter of 2015, while outbound flows posted a milder rise. Foreign direct investment in the country rose 2.2% on year in March, bringing Q1 inbound FDI up 11.3% to $34.88B.
Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Greece’s credit rating to CCC+ with a negative outlook, citing a substantial risk of a default due to the country’s drawn out negotiations with its creditors.
Just a day after the ECB pledged to fulfill its €1T bond-buying program, eurozone government borrowing costs slid to new lows on Thursday, while regional stocks took a step back from this week’s multi-year peaks.
Stocks
The BP (BP) fund created to compensate people and businesses claiming they were harmed by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has now paid out more than $5B to 62K-plus claimants, according to the fund’s administrator. BP originally said it expected to pay $7.8B to resolve claims under the settlement but raised its estimate to $9.9B in February.
Despite a slow start to U.S. IPO debuts in 2015, three big companies are soon to go public. Chief among them is Etsy (ETSY), which has priced its 16.7M-share IPO at $16, valuing the company at $1.78B. Shares in the craft/vintage goods marketplace will begin trading today. Others include Virtu Financial (VIRT), which has priced shares at $19, and Party City (PRTY), which will begin trading at $17 per share.
McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) says its chain in Japan expects to post deep losses in the current fiscal year and that it will close 131 of its stores.
Netflix (NFLX) jumps in the premarket after announcing a Q1 report which beat earnings, but sacrificed some profits to keep up with its aggressive international expansion. Investors heavily cheered subscriber growth, which rose 22% Y/Y to 4.88M in the March quarter, bringing the company’s total global streaming membership to 62.3M.
To ensure that all possible causes were properly addressed, the FAA now says it will carefully review the Orbital ATK (OA)-led investigation into October’s Antares rocket disaster. Orbital has blamed the explosion on excessive wear in the bearings of the rocket’s AJ-26 engine, although GenCorp (GY), the refurbisher of the engine, maintains the root cause to be debris.
As part of a cost-cutting strategy by its Chief Executive, Procter & Gamble (PG) may soon offload $10B-$12B worth of its beauty brands. Personal care and cosmetics companies Henkel (HENKY), Revlon (REV) and Coty (COTY) are said to be preparing bids for P&G’s haircare business, cosmetics division and fragrance unit, respectively.
SanDisk (SNDK) forecast a larger-than-expected fall in full-year revenue and announced plans to reduce costs as it struggled to meet demand for its flash-based memory products. The company further outlined it would slash 5% of its non-factory headcount and merge its enterprise product, mobile and client SSD teams.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT) has unveiled its first new brand in nine years, the biggest initiative the lodging giant has announced since its chief executive, Frits van Paasschen, left in February. The company will spend $20M to launch the Tribute portfolio, which will be made up of independent hotels that affiliate with Starwood, and will receive about 10% of the hotels’ room revenue.
Target (TGT) has agreed to reimburse about $19M to financial institutions which had issued MasterCard-branded cards that were a part of its massive data breach in 2013. The amount under the settlement with MasterCard (MA) covers the costs that banks incurred to reissue credit and debit cards to customers as a result of Target’s breach.